Blind Spot
by Luc Court
Summary: Multichapter fic, Baralai and Paine pairing, FFXFFX2 spoilers, focusing around the Crimson Squad just after formation and following them through their training. A look at the way different people grow together into a team. POV Baralai. Finished.
1. Sphere 1

__

Author's Note: Multi-chapter fic, FFX/FFX-2 spoilers, focusing around the Crimson Squad just after formation and following them through their training. A look at the way different people grow together into a team. POV Baralai.

--

__

Blind Spot

"What d'you _mean,_ we've got to march in six hours?" This is Gippal, sounding unconvinced in the common tongue. "I just got _used_ to being here, now they want us to pack up and get to the docks just like that?" He switches to Al Bhed only so that he can swear in it, swear creatively enough by the sound of it that Paine is forced to narrow her eyes while she glares at him, and yet is too proud to demand a translation. 

Paine's hair is always swept back in fern-spikes, stiffened by a liniment sold near Luca judging by the salt-smell; the hawkers promise that application keeps your bangs from your eyes during blitzball games. Unsurprisingly, it's meant to be for sporting use. Some of the Crusaders resorted to it. Most, like me, used headbands.

I know Paine claims that it's to keep from having to push her hair back every time she sets the machina lens to her eye that she takes to such fashion, but I've come to suspect she simply enjoys flicking at the strands with a snort when Gippal's being particularly obtuse.

Like now.

I say nothing as I study the right angle formed by the folder when I hold it with fingers extended. I can do this because I have been watching our recorder for the last three and a quarter days, ever since I caught sight of her eyes when she looked at the sunset during rank maneuvers. I am expecting something buried beneath that woman's surface. If it is there, I would like to know. 

If there is not, I will have to wonder where Bevelle is hiding the trick question instead.

Nooj's secret had been easier to pick out than I would have liked, but I held out against believing in it. People you put your trust in at last weren't _allowed_ to die, which explains everything about why I do not give one whit of care for Bevelle's governing priests but am inwardly rankled by the Deathseeker's fixations. 

The folder I am playing with and Nooj is attempting to steal during a ploy of disinterest is the folder containing our test instructions. I retain possession only because it is a cover for how I am continuing to stare at Paine over the edge, my eyes inscrutable at the antics of Yevon recorder and Al Bhed wastrel. I already skimmed the contents.

"They can't keep us here forever doing training exercises. Give me that," Nooj orders openly, tail-ending his commentary by a stiff grab for our paperwork. 

I sacrifice it this time. Now I cannot hide behind it, so I hang my arm off the back of my chair and resort to looking expectant at the other three.

The setting sun sneaking in past the window mesh paints herringbone patterns across Gippal's face. He doesn't know he should squint against it because it's on his blind side. Nooj is pacing, restless. Or as much as he can, periodic _limp drag limp_ across the floor, the elderly wolf trying to circle the fussing bird and force it to silence through intimidation.

He will be an excellent leader for our team, if only out of stubbornness.

Paine is not the only one who keeps an eye on turning the present into the past through a form of history. Recorders are supposed to be more detached than she is, which is why I am curious about her. If we are to fail in our tests, then our recorder would have to dutifully mark down our losses rather than extending a helping hand. That is the Yevon way; it always has been, teaching people how to watch even the closest atrocities with unmoved eyes.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with such a method. Just, I'm wondering why there's a deviance in it now.

Behind my eyes there is no sphere to remove and replay later at whim. That does not mean they aren't always running. I think Paine has realized this over the last two evenings because she has taken to avoiding looking at me directly when we are alone. Maybe I am wrong. She could have been caught up in wondering when the other two would return with dinner.

Now she pretends that no one else exists, one leg crossed sharp over the other as she swipes the cleaning cloth over the machina in her lap. The supper of one week ago had been prepared in a similar manner. She'd plucked the bird naked and clean while sneering, because the rest of us had botched it so badly we'd been ready to make soup out of rocks instead of roast.

Gippal has come up behind me while I was too busy paying attention to the small scars on Paine's knuckles. I start to jump and mask it when he drapes an arm over my shoulders. He says something; I don't remember it, can't comprehend the world except in terms of flesh and light and heron's bones, and so he has to repeat the jest of how he thinks I should be the one wearing the eyepatch.


	2. Sphere 2

__

Author's note: That hit an R rating awfully fast. Nothing explicit.

--

There are four hours left when Nooj's glower has run out of steam and turned to disinterest over the deployment orders. The folder is tossed upon a side table. I will collect it later and tuck the papers that had slid out back into order, hiding the exposure of our names and heights and Paine's weight back into their manila shield.

Gippal has gone to sleep. This is because our Deathseeker told him repeatedly to be silent, starting first at clipped commands and then escalating to open threats involving demonstration of his cane.

In revenge, Gippal is snoring.

The Al Bhed is not deliberately trying to get on our nerves, I think. He's not even that annoying except when even I need him to be quiet so I can listen. By and large, though, Gippal is the most talkative of our group and the fact that the rest of us tend to silence must seem like we're as hostile to him as anyone else. 

I don't want Gippal to withdraw from the rest of us. At times, rare at first but more common now, the Al Bhed has started breaking off when he talks and simply dropping the conversation. Without him to rally it along, it dies. Then we sit in silence while the hum of Paine's machina whines away the empty sphere hours, recording the truth of nothing happening at all.

I've noticed I've been speaking more around him to compensate. As of yet, I don't think it's a bad thing.

It could be said that Nooj is the worst of us all when it comes to getting along with Gippal. They didn't start on a good note. In this bleak environment owned by Bevelle, it's too easy to see prejudice instead of natural aloofness. Gippal's tried to brush away the catcalls of the other teams in exercise because certain of their members always seek him out quietly, bringing their equipment over to ask about what they're afraid is broken. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, but Gippal sits down with them all in the same way, crosslegged on the sands with the knees wide and ankles overlapping. Then he talks them through it. Gippal's more patient than most people give him credit for, at least when it comes to machina.

I knew when it started, could hear Gippal beginning on a lecture of how to hold the machina just right to keep the kickback from leaving your hand an aching mess by the end of the day. So did Nooj. But the Deathseeker's eyes when he glanced back to me said he didn't disapprove; both of us pretended instead like we hadn't heard a thing. Especially not the crack of a trigger being fired while the muzzle was buried against the sand, the swearing of both Gippal and the other Squad trainee as they picked themselves up and promptly tried to attach blame to one other for the accident. When that happened less than fifty feet behind us, Nooj leaned forward to the campfire and asked if I wanted another helping of stew.

Despite myself, I like Nooj. 

He also manages to get Gippal to shut up when I need to concentrate. That would be now. Paine has exited our room. Bunking in the cheap barracks has been funded by Yevon, which has customarily cared quite little for our personal wishes but has outdone itself this time in giving one bed with a broken leg, one cot, and half a set of bedding to a team of four. Modesty here is as much of a drawback as food preferences. The rations doled out to Crusaders on the field invariably taste like fish; rooms are expensive, so if you don't like hearing the rhythm of other sleepers' breaths, you'd better get used to earplugs. 

The smell of dust and motor oil has soaked into the shirt I use for my pillow. I think Gippal has been stealing it at night as a polishing cloth for his tutorial classes.

I can't say I expected anything different. Special treatment for Crusaders isn't as glamourous as for Summoners, and even they have to rough it. In comparison, we are half-deaths. Our fates are to meet fiends and fall to them but we have a time extension on them that makes it uncertain, unlike the crags of Mount Gagazet drawing closer with a malice hinging on sentient.

Somehow I can't foresee recorders being popularized amidst the Crusaders. Documentaries of the doomed are in poor taste.

Perhaps Bevelle needs to revitalize its applicants, so they want to paint an overly romantic picture of life like this. This implies that they expect Operation Mi'ihen to fail and are trying to prepare in advance to restore Crusader ranks. 

There is something I still can't figure out about the rumors I've heard of the Operation, mostly concerning Maesters remaining involved despite how it's said forbidden machina are being brought in. I know Bevelle's temple has firearm machina specifically absolved by the Maesters themselves, and those are the same kinds that we're using in the teams. The Crusaders that are staying with the Operation are supposed to be excommunicated, it's said, but the Maesters haven't left yet.

What else are the Maesters deciding is free from punishment by Sin?

I decide to ask Paine.

When I find her, she's sitting overlooking the coastline. Bikanel's deserts are harsh. Even with encampments next to the ocean, the air at noon sucks the moisture out of you. Only the strictest officers insist that we perform exercises while exposed to the sun during those times; otherwise, the camp is most active in the mornings and at night. The latter time would be a comfort if it wasn't so cold. I have only had to live in the desert for a few weeks and I already hate it.

I would find nothing salvageable about Bikanel at all if it wasn't for the evenings. Now in particular is a memory I think I will savor to replay at leisure, just like a sphere set to repeat during winter nights to remind you that summer used to exist as more than just a word. The roar of the ocean is a tamed beast purring. The lines of a pair of legs drawn up with arms resting upon them, body language dictating that this is private reflection copyrighted as pale hair in a proud ruff, partnership with equally pale skin; all this is turning into silhouette as the day dissolves into night.

Paine does not seem to mind when I join her. This assumption is made purely on the fact that she does not push me instantly into the ocean.

At first neither of us speak. There is no need to, not when the sea is doing it for us. We sit side by side and watch the time disappear unmarked by either of our sets of recording equipment.

Paine's shorts have three buckles on each side. If you survived unsnapping them, you could peel them off her legs like the skin from a grape. 

"What are you looking at?" brings me back to the present moment and the present lie, so I take my luxury in glancing up to our recorder. By the time my eyes have settled on her, there is a distraction already on my lips.

"Why did you join Yevon?" 

She snorts, derisive, and looks back over the waters. "You're awfully nosy." One hand moves down to rub her leg. I ignore it and continue to watch her face as she speaks. "Shouldn't I be asking you the same thing?"

"I was born in Bevelle. It... seemed natural for me to take part." My mouth is wonderfully earnest. Change tactics. "I guess I should say, why did you join the archival teams? You don't look like you've got a lot of family to guard from Sin--you haven't participated in the mail run, I didn't see any messages," I add in quick explanation, an excuse made on the spot to cover what I had actually drawn my conclusions from. "It's not like fighting. Are you hoping for a promotion, maybe become a priestess after all this is done?"

It's a roundabout insult. It works. Paine turns narrowed eyes to me, feline annoyance that makes me wonder if she brushes her hair with the back of her hand after licking it. "Are you saying I don't deserve to be here?" she demands, imperious, and for one rushed instant I am grateful to her tendancies for misinterpretation. If she is angry, she will not notice as much when I ask my next question.

"Most people have a reason to want to... protect Spira. They have a personal tie." Wait for it. Now. "Did you leave a lover back home?"

"Stop that!" she snaps and now I really have crossed a boundary. Her limbs collect themselves to ready for standing, intent on carrying her away like the doom of an offended plague wind. Instead I reach out and touch her. Just a few silent fingers on her elbow and they mean, _I'm sorry._

It's a quiet enough gesture that it succeeds.

So she does not have a deeper tie in the temples already. The chances of a priest pulling her strings directly are lessened, but they are not absolutely eliminated. Homage to the need for a better apology involves switching conversation to something that will be easier to speak about.

"You're fascinated by him. By Nooj. It's like... touching history, isn't it," I say while inwardly debating the verb and noun in that order, feeling the prickle of ragged coastal grasses through my pants and leaning to pluck a stem so that I can roll it between my fingers. "Getting to watch him. Wondering if that'll be you in several years when you've fought so many battles."

"He's got nothing to do with this."

Her voice is strained. She doesn't sound like she wants to talk about Nooj, that's what my hunches tell me, but I haven't yet understood the reasons why.

This entire conversation is going awry by the feel of it. I meant to talk to her about the Crusaders. Now I'm sidetracking myself.

On Nooj.

I drop the piece of grass I have violated into tiny pieces. "It's too bad we have to ship out so quickly. I would have liked to have a better chance to... just watch the sun go down like this. It looks like it's melting away into the water." The ocean's a safer bet than a person, particularly when both are on fire. "Like it's going to drown itself and drag everything slowly with it. All you can do is sit here and watch while it happens."

"The view on the Highroad's better." Paine finds dismissal to be as reliable as her sword. "You don't have all this _sand_ getting in your face when the wind blows. There's the stink of the chocobo stalls in the summertime when it's humid, but I'd rather get bird than this place anyday."

"You're talking about the overlook across from the Travel Agency?" It's the conversation's fault, I decide, even while my words continue on. Its natural inertia is to, "I'm told that's favorite spot of couples," _ruin everything I thought I wanted to say._

Her reaction comes as expected within what I have come to predict are Paine's boundaries. She hits me. Then she asks me why I am smiling, and I think of something more creative to tell her than a joke upon her name. War is pain. Friends are a pain.

Love is pain. "I was thinking about visiting there. After the exams, I mean," and my enthusiasm is as innocent and hopeful as a spring-fresh youth's despite how I have just come to that decision seconds before saying it. "Do you think we'll get time?"

"Who knows?" Talking about the future has never won me points with our recorder, not when it's of maybes instead of certainty. She shifts. One toe of her boot digs restlessly into the sand. "Not like it makes a difference. Haven't you heard the saying, you can never see the same sunset twice?" 

Paine's voice is as husky as a panther's when she says that. But then again, it always is, no matter how many times I have sat and savored it.

I reply to her in tenor. "Doesn't that mean you should take chances when they come?"

The waves lap at vanilla rocks below us, reflecting back the darkening clouds.

Having something else to motivate the conversation along would be Gippal's field of expertise right now. He would make an observation aloud that none of the rest of us would expect, maybe something about how he's thinking about teaching the other trainees to fish using upgraded machina poles designed from the guns. Or he would do something equally strange just to break the silence and get us talking again. Since he's not here, it's up to me to rally things back on course. 

But I'm the one surprised when Paine turns fast enough that for an instant she's a lioness about to strike, eyes fierce in that visage of swept-back fur; one paw is trapping mine where I'd been fidgeting my knuckles in the grass, and then when I'm occupied in glancing down to see if I'll see my bones exposed and bleeding amidst her leather, her fingers go into my scalp.

Sliding around the back of my neck.

Paine's mouth is hotter than I expected. It reminds me of a wound inflamed, burning with its own death; a miniature sun descending to the coolness of the ocean formed by my throat. Her hair is sea-salt. Sweat has mixed with leather and musk perfuming the air while I am busy trying to memorize the taste of Paine's spit on my lip.

Hands are moving down the buckles of my jacket and I am not sure if they are hers or mine because the recording sphere of my mind has been broken on a loop of herringbone patterns. Endless repeat of light on skin. Blinding.

And then my ears are full of the tides, waves of water bleeding into exhalations that eventually become my name while the sky dies.


	3. Sphere 3

All the teams are scheduled to transfer locations during the night. Check-in for recorders is two hours before then so they can hand in their reports, which means that it's up to me and Gippal and Nooj to make sure everything's ready to be pack-carried.

In reality, this means that it's up to Gippal and myself. Nooj escapes during these times. I think he claimed once that he was going for maintenance on his artificial limbs.

The blonde surprises me by already being awake when I return to the room. Thankfully he doesn't ask where Paine is, so I don't have to come up with a proper sentence to explain why she was not here right now, but instead is out logically attending roll-call. I am not ready right now to claim that I did see her, but that we didn't speak much. Night arrived. We both had business to attend to. End of discussion gone so horribly wrong that I still didn't know if I should be checking myself for missing limbs.

"So how was it?"

I don't expect this question. Not from Gippal of all people, with his puppy-dog enthusiasm and loose-hipped charm. 

"What do you mean?"

"Only that you've been _staring_ at her _forever_ man, I was wondering when you'd be doing anything about it."

Forever is not three days. Not even three and a quarter and a sunset. In Gippal's world, eternity must be a concept too vast for comprehension.

"That's not funny, Gippal," I say, implying the jibe but meaning really that the Al Bhed had noticed something I didn't expect. This is because it is not true. Absolutely not, and then I pick up the empty water canteens that I accidentally dropped on the floor when he spoke. I had been surprised by such a wild claim; it had been an understandable fumble. "I'm not... are you saying I'm interested in her? Our recorder?" Remind him that she is performing a job despite the dexterity of her faint smiles and the line of her jaw when she sets it stubbornly, that even _if_ her calves _are_ poetry living in flesh, she is still Yevon's watchful gaze. 

I think I can smell her on my clothes.

Fayth save me.

To better hide my eyes, I heft the mismatched bedrolls from the floor to the mattress so I can start to wind them up. Our team owes it to Gippal that we'd managed to collect a little over two sets. This wasn't to say that he'd begun to charge for his late-night instruction of machina; the official explanation was that the other trainees were dumping their extras on us. Nooj always told them it was because they took pity on him because Gippal kept trying to tinker with his arm, and the instructors believed that.

Gippal, meanwhile, is still grinning. The whole mishap is one big joke to him between friends. "If you're not, that's one hell of a 'not interested' you two were going at."

This is what I get for being friendly with him.

"Weren't you supposed to be sleeping instead of spying on us?"

"Nooj kicked me in the head when he rolled over. I swear it was on purpose. Why do I always get stuck on the floor with him? If we weren't leaving now, I'd be demanding to change shifts." Gippal's fingers are an exaggerated huff of motion as he clips our extra ammunition secure. "Okay, wherever we're going next, Baralai? _You_ don't get to be the one holding the straws when we pull, got it?"

I do not say anything. Eventually Gippal realizes that I have returned to tying down the knots of our equipment, and he asks his next question with the hesitancy I have come to recognize as him trying to be considerate.

"Don't tell me she was your first?"

"No, she was _not,_" I retort, suddenly sick of this interrogation in a way I cannot explain because I was not aware the feeling could exist before now. The ropes are looping themselves wrong in my fingers and now I am forced to redo them. Damned rebellious pieces of string.

"_I_ had a sweetheart. Well," Gippal corrects himself, "Kinda one. Nothing serious, you know? She was sorta young. Didn't take too well me talking about joining up with the Crusaders," Gippal drawls, stretching his arms over his head and then letting the elbows dangle, forearms loplanked with his fingers spread behind his skull. "Said any Al Bhed would just get kicked around by Yevon bastards--no offense," he covers quickly. "But, uh..."

"None taken." However intricate the romantic circles of the Al Bhed are, I'm not certain I want to hear about them in detail.

Gippal continues anyway, blithe to my aggressive lack of reaction. "Turns out when I get here, I'm not even allowed to try out. Can you believe that? Just 'cause I'm an Al Bhed. Yeah, sure they spit on us, but then they use _our_ machina. Badly, too!"

"They acquire machina from somewhere other than imports," I reply dryly, suddenly not even knowing if what I've recited back dutifully is true. It's the explanation of the priests and I've never had the interest to doubt even though I'm aware I should know better. For one thing, the phrase is nonsensical.

"Oh, sure they do," Gippal retorts, but without fight. It's true. He's seen this arguement enough times that he doesn't care to rejoin it. I don't either so it makes it fair between us. "Anyway, like I was saying. Couldn't just turn around and go home when I found that out or Rik'd laugh right at me for that one. And, uh... I think I can do it, you know?" 

Somewhere in Gippal's exposition I have realized that the blonde is going on just for the purpose of being able to talk. It rushes out of him like water unbarred during a flood. I didn't think he could be nervous, but I should have realized he just shows it in different ways.

"So I found out this Crimson Squad thing, signed myself up. If they want to block me out of the Crusaders then they can, but I'm still gonna succeed no matter what."

He doesn't notice that I am silent.

"And then I find out I'm not the only Al Bhed who's gotten the idea, yeah? So I run into this redhead, didn't even expect him to be one either because he _dyes_ his hair so no one suspects and gives him trouble. Can't hide his eyes, that's the problem, so he wears goggles most of the time. Kickass game of cards."

Paine must be out talking with Nooj. Neither of them have returned yet.

"Hey, are you listening? Baralai?"

I wonder if she is asking him about the reasons he still fights.

"Baralai, come in. Hello?"

I wonder if she is smiling.

I need to wash my hands before the scent drives me insane.


	4. Sphere 4

I don't know why she did it, and Paine does not make the motion to approach me to explain. Like a cat aloof, she shows me her back with her shoulders rigid, and talks more to Nooj or even Gippal than to me if she can help it.

I think she is trying to pretend it never happened.

The question of our encounter keeps turning around in my mind on the march down to the ship docks. Even though the Squad is not directly in the middle of the desert, it is not an easy trip. Logic would mean we followed the coast. That would keep us from getting lost by accident, but the instructors have insisted that we remain out of visual range of the ocean when we are on the move en masse. We have been ordered to keep unseen in case of ships passing even this close to the island. Though there are ramshackle sheds serving as barrack wards already established, no clues have been left behind in them for us to guess who else has used them before. Even the graffiti of bored cadets has been scraped clean into oblivion, bare patches left behind instead of names.

Here in the heart of nowhere, I wonder if anyone would know if fiends overran us and we disappeared. Then I remember that the instructors report to the maesters and hence are less likely to be disposable, so I pay attention when I see them walking.

When Team Four asked after the need for secrecy, they were told that Yevon feared others spying upon us, on this training for the elite that should produce the best soldiers of all. Team Four did not receive an answer when they pressed further, wanting to know just who Yevon could be so afraid of, and as disciplinary action they were forced to run laps weaponless around the camp outside the range of the guards. The story was circulated around the campfires at dinner as we heard their footsteps count down their onus, coming closer and then disappearing again, all of us talking quietly with an ear out for their return. We marked off the proof that they were still alive by repeating the tally each time. Eighteen. Nineteen.

Silence. 

Twenty.

Now that we are close to the final exam, questions have begun to resurface. Many of the other hopefuls are restless. They have stayed in this wasteland for too long without seeing the reasons why and the memory of comfortable beds are haunting some. Running water, others. A few of us miss home. 

It is a point of pride in our own Team that neither Gippal nor Nooj complain about that last point. Gippal never talks about his family except in vague descriptives that quickly turn to old anecdotes. I have learned more about his cousin Yimmo and her experiences shoopuf-training than I think I have ever wanted to. By any stretch of the imagination.

Nooj takes any talk about people's personal lives as an excuse to sulk.

Faced with their example, I say nothing. Bevelle is not something I find lacking during this training either; the taste of all this bureaucracy is one that is beginning to turn bitter with each nonsensical requirement. Don't be seen. Don't ask questions. I already know those principles because I have grown up with them in my blood, but I have begun to distrust myself ever since coming here.

Yevon is not acting as if they care if we are willing to work for them after all this is done. Bevelle's institutions are customarily much better about cajoling their higher officers with benefits, but right now they seem to be enjoying how long we can fight exhausted. It is hardly conductive to future loyalty.

There are no answers that I can find in this mess. I would talk to Gippal to see if the Al Bhed has any other misguided opinions, but Paine has been sticking close to his side for the last forty minutes. She knows I want to speak with him because every time she has looked over her shoulder at me, I have glanced up. I think this is why she is taking so long.

She could at least stop looking back so often.

In order to give myself something different to focus on than the way Paine's lashes rim the lid as delicate as a moth's antenna, I slow my stride to meet up with Nooj. He is the only one of us to carry less than a standard share on his back. It is hard enough for him to keep the pace in the sand the way he is, and even though he grumbled that he could heft as much as the rest of us, I know it is all he can do just to maintain position out here. Standing fast with a machina rifle in hand, he is still a terror. An enforced march removes all his dignity.

Daybreak does nothing to warm us with the sun so newly returned to this world. The thin light trickles over the ratted soil of Bikanel and we are bathed in it, but find no comfort. Team Three passes us by while Nooj and I walk in silence. The buckles on their equipment jingle and clank while their leader urges them to jog to point position. One man gives Nooj and I a surprised glance, and I realize that it is Three's recorder; he starts to thumb his machina on and swivel it in our direction before he notices his teammates are leaving him behind and he must now run to catch them. We escape being detailed on Yevon's tally sheet. For now.

Team Four is far back in order, almost to the very end of the marching train. They took being shoved to the rear with far more grace than we would have, bully-punching one another's shoulders as if being the Crimson Rejects was a label to champion. I will not worry about how far we are falling behind until I hear their voices. We have plenty of time until then. 

I just need to think of a good way to start a conversation first.

"Just so you know, Baralai, I already talked with Paine."

__

"What?" My voice is enough of a leap of surprise that I hope it masked what sounded like horror in it. Visions of her discussing our encounter to someone else race through my thoughts, followed by a stab of panic. Why Nooj? Why did she tell him about what we did on the overlook? 

Why do I care if he knows?

"She came asking me the same things just before we left. About why I'm here." Unaware of the mixed relief this explanation brings me, Nooj turns his head upwards. The loops of his hair slide over his shoulders and cluster to his neck, fluid as fish in a watersack. "Why I joined the Crimson Squad tryouts if I don't have any interest in rank. After all," he adds, "dead men don't lead companies."

"No. They don't." I'm still off-balance from his announcing Paine's name. It seems like everyone knows what I'd rather hide. Ever since Gippal pointed it out to me, I feel as if my incrimination is painted on my face like an Al Bhed tattoo. I might as well go around telling everyone that yes, just as the odds predict, Paine closes her eyes when you have your fingers up to the palm in her. It would get the matter out of the way so that the betters could collect their winnings and something else could be found for the gambling pool to debate.

The silence is hanging awkward as a convict left to strangle rather than having their neck snapped clean. To repair this, I speak. "Why do you feel like you don't have anything left? Everyone respects you. You must have something to look forward to even if it's not direct combat--that's what the Crimson Squad is for, isn't it?" Or so we were told when we signed up. "Taking a commanding position instead?"

Nooj is unaware of my internal dilemma involving memories of flushed cheeks and possible betrayal. "I've lived a long time, Baralai." His cane makes soft _paffs_ in the sand as he pulls himself along. "Sometimes, a person finishes their work ahead of schedule. There's nothing more to it than that."

"You're only a year old than I am," I reply, unable to keep from rankling as I am exposed to the man's diatribe. "You can't say that you're used up already."

Nooj continues, disregarding my logic. "And what else am I supposed to be?" His grip digs the walking stick deeper in the ground, leaving small divots beside his footprints. The Deathseeker's emotions are kept pent in his hands, just as Gippal's is in the fluidity of his tongue. "I don't want to be a relic of the past that's applauded and then put on a shelf to collect dust. What am I going to do five years from now? What about ten? Withering away in body just because no one wants to let me end a life I'm tired of, even though I'm too stubborn just to put a machina to my head and be done with it."

Nooj's voice is tired, but harsh, like wine left to ferment until it became vinegar that stings the roof of your mouth when you drink of him.

"You're nineteen," I protest, and mean it even though I am smiling. "Your life isn't over yet--"

"Look." He is fed up with my prodding of him and now turns upon me fully. "You came to talk with me for a reason, didn't you? This isn't just a pleasant bonding conversation between two comrades. So what is it? The weather? It's hot again. Congratulations." With that he redirects his bile to the sands ahead and thrusts his cane to yank his weight onwards. If he were intact, it would be a haughty stride away. Instead it is a limp.

Confronted by this calling of my bluff, my mind fumbles. I do not know how to redirect the conversation to Mi'ihen properly from here, not in a subtle enough manner that our Deathseeker will not forget five minutes later. Nooj is an established Crusader in the bargain. For all I am aware, he could be the one meant to checkmate our team if we are also deemed as troublesome as Team Four.

"I don't understand Paine." This comes out of me before I can figure to stop it. "She's been acting odd... ever since a few days ago, and now I can't get her to say why." Once I have blurted it, I am glad that I did because the act was like spitting a seed out of my mouth, one whose shell had split to leak sap on my tongue.

For all that the sentence makes no sense to me, Nooj nods as if he expected such a reply. It slows him down, bleeds open the temper in the air. "I figured. Listen, Baralai. You'll never understand women." He sounds confident. Being jaded is a role he is comfortable in. "If she's not giving you an answer, you'll never get one. I wouldn't recommend trying too hard."

Nooj is more satisfied with speaking from the standpoint of someone who has been enough places that he has literally left parts of himself along the way. Or so I assume. I turn the challenge back on him in return. "Are you saying that just because you haven't had any luck yourself?"

"Luck?" It is Nooj's turn to snort at me. He pings a finger against the metal of his leg and my eye, following, bears witness to the numerous scrapes pitting the surface. "With finding someone who's attracted to _this_ instead of just Nooj the Crusader? Nooj the Undying? Nooj on a pedestal of fame that he'd rather jump from than stand another minute up there? Propped up, no less. What a _nice_ story that'd be. I've outgrown bedtime tales, Baralai," he states sourly, fumbling nerveless fingers on his cane as the metal fingers slip. "There's no future for me as anything other than a walking corpse. I'd be foolish to expect otherwise."

"Hold on." I reach out for the cane to steady it even knowing that I could have humiliated him more easily just by striking him in the face. His gaze when he pins me beneath it is a cold stare, self-hatred rancorously aware of its own limitations. Nooj is a Crusader. By looking into his face now, I am reminded that he has killed enough fiends to become legend, and that fiends were once people before their first death.

I keep talking. Nothing wrong with my sense of preservation. "You say there's nothing for you to look forward to? Maybe not for you, but there's something for the rest of our team. _We're_ not through with wanting to fight yet. Gippal wants to be able to prove that he's as good as anyone else in Spira no matter where his parents came from. Are you just going to ignore that even knowing he'll get disqualified if you go off and get eaten? Even me," and my voice is running on desperation while I think I am dying a thousand times inside his stare, "There are things that I want to be able to do out there, to be able to see. Even Paine wants..." My voice trails off in hesitation over the sentence, and I eventually close my mouth and let it be assumed I meant to end it that way. "The thing is, we don't know how to get there. You're supposed to be our leader. If you're really that caught up in dying, why did you ever sign up to be involved with us at all?"

I'm broken off when Nooj tightens his grip and yanks his cane away from me. He demands that crutch back even as he denies it. "I'm not here to help a bunch of teenagers discover themselves," he snarls back, with all the buried malice of a winter bear. "No matter what you say, I'm old. Maybe I'm not a wizened elder, but I hobble like one already. Isn't _that_ good enough? Take your lesson _there,_ Baralai." 

He can't walk fast enough away from me. 

I watch him try.

Gippal would be able to say something now that could win through Nooj's stubbornness. Gippal can do it because the Al Bhed himself is resolute in his own way. There is only me standing here, and I do not do an adequate job of this sort of thing. "You're so hung up on the idea that you're already dead." Letting emotion into my voice is not something I enjoy. I have not enjoyed a great deal since enrolling for these tests. Now is no exception. "Why did you start talking about any of that to me if you don't have any intention of your mind being changed?"

"I _told_ you because I want all of you to _give up on--_" Nooj starts, and his voice is rising in fight before he cuts its tendons and lets it crash to a halt. 

Bevelle trained me to see and solve suspicions. I stand watching one now, seeing the long quirk of his hair hang in question-mark punctuation. My performance scores in esoterics were high enough that I qualified for the Crimson Squad, but they give me no hints now. 

To this quandary, I can think of only one answer.

"No."

When Team Four reaches us, they offer to help take both our packs, along with the blame for our delay. I let them carry mine. Then I do not ask Nooj before I yank his off his shoulder, and heft it myself.


	5. Sphere 5

__

Author's Note: I actually have to apologize for this chapter. The dialogue was never meant to go on this long, but what was supposed to be a brief meeting with Gippal somehow expanded beyond expectations. The timetable states that the party's supposed to be mauled by fiends by now. Instead, we get an Al Bhed messing around. Next chapter things should be back on track.

I'd also like to thank anyone taking the time to read this fic; thank you for all your comments. Believe it or not, they're actually encouraging me to finish this faster than I would normally. If anyone's looking for pure pr0n, I'm afraid you'll have to go elsewhere... *watches everyone disappear* ... Well, that solved that.

-----

"I don't understand Nooj." 

This is me, sounding frustrated in the common tongue. It is the only one I know, but it is not good enough for once. 

I do not comprehend why. It has always worked before. Then the world became composed of red eyes glaring, brown eyes cooly amused, and green eyes dancing with Al Bhed swirls; now nothing makes sense, and the maesters seem more sinister by the day.

I am stuck repeating the same tactics over and over because I don't know how to keep them from being mistakes.

We have pitched camp to wait out the noon. The radiance of the sands is already glaring enough to make my eyes water to look at them, so I avoid anything but the most sidelong of glances out of the small cluster of rocks the Teams are using for cover support. Even the briefest second of exposure leaves me with flarespots spattered across my vision, and I must blink them away before I can see again.

Gippal and I try to peg the canvas shroud down. He is the mechanical genius and I am not, which in this case extends to basic survival skills of rigging cords. I should know how to prepare the lean-to by now, but my hands refuse to work properly during this clouding of my mind. Thankfully, he does not reprimand me when my half of the shelter keeps falling down.

"It's a signature style," he nods instead, hands on his hips as he surveys the lopsided structure. "Lemme tell you, _no one's_ going to see that and think it belongs to anyone but _us._"

When Nooj and I crested one of the dunes to find several of the Teams held back to look for us, neither of us could think of what to say in excuse for our falling behind. It was Team Four that came to our rescue again, the leader giving a jaunty wink as he sauntered down the ridge and proclaimed that he'd stolen the mighty Nooj's cane to taunt us both. He'd circled the group beckoning for applause, as ribald as any blitzball star before one of the instructors stepped forward and struck him across the head.

No one has an answer for why the instructors made us start such a trip at night instead of the evening, but I think the official label is that it is another exercise. Everything they have done seems to be engineered for maximum discomfort. Trying to mark days by risings and settings of the light is useless by now. All we do is get lost.

The sun hurts my eyes. Gippal has flopped down to sit against the side of the stone outcropping where we stacked our pack supplies, and he is playing with the side of the canvas tent nearest to him. 

For a moment I do not know if he heard me at all, so I repeat what I said about Nooj.

"No kidding." The reply is slow off his tongue. He takes his time before continuing, finger poking again and again at the cloth flaps. "What about him happened this time?"

For the first time in a great while, I hesitate. Not from wanting to choose my words correctly, for I customarily pause out of habit, but because I really do not know what to say. Words are necessary because I no longer trust what my eyes are telling me. It doesn't make sense.

"Maybe... I don't really know what's going on. Not just with Nooj," I explain, pulling up my knees as I sit beside the Al Bhed. I look down into the canyon formed by my thighs and calves and stare at the miniature desert below the arches of my legs. No insects move. There is nothing for me to obliterate if I felt like playing at being Sin. "With this whole test. I thought it was a great opportunity--not having to serve in the Crusaders first, advancing ahead of them anyway. It was... supposed to be just like skipping ranks. I liked that chance," I confess. "Being able to cut through the usual route and just get where I wanted, if I stayed aware of all the circumstances. I was _good_ at that. But now..." And I hate my voice, the way it sounds, but Gippal makes no sign of reaction to it, "now I don't even know what I'm accomplishing by being here at all, except to get all confused."

Gippal's fingers have become bored with the shelter and are now wrapped into the straps of his carrier pack. "Don't wanna hear you say something like that, Baralai," he replies without missing a step in the rhythm of his play-tugging. He is not looking at me. "If you lose confidence in yourself, then who am I gonna ask for a translation when the directions don't make a lick of sense?"

"I still couldn't put this together," I protest, waving towards the demi-tent. In reality, I suspect Gippal knows how to do it perfectly from long experience judging from how deft his hands were, but he is kind enough not to make this fact obvious.

The Al Bhed lets me know just how stupid I am being by mumbling a sound in his mouth that's a cross between a snort and a chuckle. "_Tispycc._" Unable to find an appropriate toothpick, he wets a piece of string on his lip for lack of anything better to stick in his mouth while he talks. "I'm not talking about the _tent._ I mean that you're my friend. And you know things that I don't, so I kinda need you to be there when I'm getting over my head on something and don't realize. Got it?" Fingers roll the black strand, making it writhe while he plays with it.

Something about Gippal's words makes me uncomfortable. It is because they are so open. Experience has taught me by now that he is no fool despite his test scores, so it befuddles me when he is blatant; I look for the lie, for what he must be hiding, and find nothing. 

It means that his verdict is much simpler than my own on this whole puzzle. "Y'know," Gippal is saying, never slowing down to watch me watch him. "You've been acting wierd ever since you got hung up on Paine. Can't you just talk to her? I know she's not upset at you."

This is a less sensitive subject than it was a day ago. Talking to Nooj must have scarred something over in me, and if the Al Bhed is judging me, he does not show it. "She's not?"

"Well, uh..." The sand crunches beneath Gippal's feet as he adjusts his heels. "Maybe just a little." 

I do not know what to say to that. 

We both sit in silence. Eventually Gippal spits out the string after almost swallowing it by accident. He tries to shake it off his fingertip and cannot, the fiber coated with his salvia and clinging tenaciously, and then he tries to wipe it on my leg. When I give him a disapproving look, the blonde only grins at me. 

"I thought I insulted her over Nooj," I admit after a while. The weight of the words lessens once I speak them. "I... from the way she was acting, it seemed like she was paying the most attention to him. It should have been safe to discuss Nooj with her, but when I did... no," I catch myself before I start to project theories, find safe ruses to fall back on. "I don't know what I did."

Beside me, Gippal is doing something involving the laces of my boots and mystical knotwork. "Over Nooj?" he questions me, distracted while he performs high ritual with my shoes. "It'd be impossible not to get worried over _that_ guy. He's a nutcase. Paine came asking me if there was anything I could suggest to get his interest going in stuff other than maybe like, fiends, his _gun,_ life expectancy rates, getting _splattered,_ you know. At the time I couldn't think of anything." Unable to keep his position comfortable by continuing to stoop over my foot, the Al Bhed finally moves to roll onto his stomach, sprawling out before me while he concentrates. "If you want, I'll go check him out, okay? If it makes you feel any better. Just do me a favor?"

I wonder if he knows he is risking a broken nose doing that with my bootstraps. "Yes?" Or if I will ever be able to untie them afterwards.

"Have it out with Paine, before you two drive me _nuts_, yeah?"

Having run out of extra play on the strands, Gippal shifts himself to fish beneath my legs for the smaller support ropes we are using to hang the tent. They are thick enough to slip the laces when he tries to tie them straight together, so he resorts to winding them into the elaborate pattern he has already established between my feet. 

I am witness to this without protest. He wedges his head against my knee so that he can reach for the piston cords we are using to attach the canvas to the rock outcropping for support. The tent twangs in protest when he yanks too hard, and he nudges my feet over so that his business is made easier.

For some reason, I permit this. Right now in the haven provided by our deformed shelter, in the shadows cool and calm, I think I can see this whole matter with Gippal's perception, his lack of complication. Our team was fighting with itself. If a machina did not work properly, you took it apart and cleaned the parts, then reassembling it with greater care until all its components ran smoothly with one other. If there was something broken, you fixed it. When people argued, you found a way to get them to them stop.

And then you weave even the simplest pieces of yarn together until they became an ornate whole once more.

"You'd do that?" My own voice surprises me when I finally let it be used. "Talk to Nooj?"

"Hey, we've got to stick together." Gippal turned a smile as bright as noonday light upon me, and reached out to shove at my shoulder. His lacework is dropped without a second thought. "I watch your back, you watch mine. Yeah?"

There is a slow smile moving across my face. I can feel the relief like a rush of water pouring down on me from rain. "Right." 

Everything is simpler with the Al Bhed. He is infectious with his honesty. When I am around him for too long, I start to believe that misunderstandings are no greater than grains of sand mixing with machina oil. They are irritants. You can clean them away and keep going so long as you attend to them before the gears grind to a halt.

I am used to subtle arguments destroying the whole; the glances of the maesters to one another are familiar to me, and I have learned to read volumes of disaster pending on the heels of a stride gone too heavy. Bevelle has raised me well for its politics, but Yevon is not the world.

Yevon is not Gippal, and there are more ways to see than I have been taught.

Gippal is up and gone before I can wish him any form of luck. Without his chatter in my ear, I can hear the sounds of the teams dragging themselves slowly around the rest hole, quiet murmurs of doubt and hope mixing in with periodic hushes as the instructors pass by to check on the lighting conditions. Soon the noon will pass and we will have to embark for the rest of our trip to the docks. 

I see a hush of grey hair pass by en route to our tent, and when I look up to try and catch it, I am unlucky enough to see only the desert sun. It is Paine, I decide quickly, because I can smell the leather. It creaks as she kneels down to hunt through what sounds like another pack; likely the carrier for her machina, judging from the liquid whisper of a sphere scraping against its receptacle prongs. Buckles clatter. Now would be the perfect time to try and talk with her.

Then I realize I have no idea how to get my boots undone from the wall.


	6. Sphere 6

__

Author's Note: I'd like to thank anyone reading for their patience with this chapter. It looks like I just had to take a break and write random short fic before continuing with this one. If you're still with me, thanks for continuing to read along. 

Part of this chapter involves the adage, 'Find a sphere and the fiends appear', referring to the way fiends are drawn to spheres.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

One knife and a replacement pair of laces later, we break camp.

Paine's efficiency is something I, for once, do not thank. She was done with her errand and gone before I could even make a start on the mess Gippal had made of my shoes. Trying to hold a serious conversation with our recorder while physically attached to our equipment didn't strike me as the best way about it, and I was lucky enough that she did not notice me there. 

We move towards the early evening and the sun follows us on our trek west. The sands simmer with the heat they soaked from the noon, and I can feel it baking the leather of my boots to cracking. The ends of my borrowed laces keep flapping as I walk. They are too long and were never trimmed down. This does not surprise me; they were Gippal's spare set. I dug them out of his pack in revenge for my ruined ones.

Time stretches out in the caramel manner of afternoons, when you only stay alive because you are waiting for the world itself to wake back up again and return to you, yawning. The Teams are lulled into the spell. Talking takes too much energy, so many trudge in silence, acquaintanced with their companions and needing no further discourse. Even the recorders are lazy. They will get marked down for it later but a number of them rebel in passivity now.

Ours is. Paine is walking with the machina down rather than wasting the sphere on hours of repeating desert. Playback loops could be the story of our lives with recycled footage when they feature us later in reports tailored to appeal to the masses. Join the Crusaders. Get sand in places you really did not want it.

The silence of this march is the exact backdrop that I think I would like featured for my dramatic fatal wound when they sandwich my profile after Nooj, but before Gippal, who would steal all the attention anyway. Come to think of it, I would have no luck coming after the Deathseeker either. They should save him for a special highlight feature.

We would still all be casualties of propaganda, which is why I am careful about approaching Paine now. She does not expect me. I read her displeasure in the arc of her head turning up to spy me, and then the pause at its apex before it returns to glaring at the ground. 

"Listen..." I start, too late to keep myself from dying.

That is my first understanding of what happened when I am finally able to breathe again. The impact that shook the ground repeats, playing it as deftly as a Macalania drummer. I am on my stomach in the dirt and my lungs are trying to cough it out, or they would like to once they remember how to work. Whatever hit me doesn't feel like it left a wound. I'm not certain. Nerves all over my body report back only blank tingles, so I will my head to turn to the side and I see Paine.

She is also on the ground. The recording machina in her hand had struck and bounced hard enough to activate, and the lens is pointed directly at my eye. It is unnerving to see a sphere scripting down my life from only a few millimeters away, so instead of thinking about how this is the wrong angle entirely to be remembered at, I urge the numbed fingers of one hand forward by rote and shove it away.

Gunfire erupts. Machina bullets spit through the air above us and the ground repeats its protest by shivering as a frightened babe might tremble. It is only when I hear the screech of throats inhuman that I understand what has happened. Fiends.

Paine is as disoriented as I am by the look of it. She starts to lift her head to get a better look and I reach over, push her down with a hand on the tufts of her hair. Resistance to my palm is her answer to me for the indignity, but I ignore it. Paine can glare at me later. From what my mind is piecing together haphazard, we must have been caught in a tremor started by them when they attacked the caravan line, walked over some bolthole they'd been lurking in. The teams must have been attractive prey. We'd have drawn them to us simply by walking en masse in this wasteland.

"They're after the spheres! Get the recorders back here, now!"

Or not.

The officer who shouted the first order is busy rattling off more. I cannot catch them all in the tempest of firepower, so instead I pay more attention to the machina nestled between myself and Paine like an unwanted babe. There is little chance that the guards will cease their counterattack just for the two of us. 

Ferverently, I hope that there are no sand worms coming in attendance to this, or Paine and I will only know they have arrived when we are swallowed into the earth. 

We lie like that exposed, hoping that the ground is not about to cave away beneath us both and usher us into darkness. The hand that restrained our recorder before is remaining pressed against the small of her back, feeling the tension in her muscles as she also debates how quickly we will be riddled should we dare to stand.

In the confusion, it is strange to hear the defensive plans ordered aloud mutate into names we recognize. "Baralai! Paine!" It is Nooj's voice. "Get out of there! They've got the flamethrowers!"

He repeats himself twice before the words finally make sense to me. Paine is spitting soft curses into the dirt. She is praying for destruction to visit itself upon Yevon and Bikanel equally, obliterating anything involved with these idiotic tests into ashes of memory. Personally, I am saving my energy for wondering just how Nooj thinks we can escape. None of my cautious glances have shown me anything other than flat ground, and the both of us will be roasted to a crisp five feet over just as easily as if we stayed right here. 

Left, my side. Nothing but open terrain. Right, her side. The same. In front of me is only the rise of a dune, and that exposes us to bullets. Then the hint of shadow resolves itself into a vision three-dimensional and I see our escape fifty-three degrees from our recorder's head as north.

"Paine!" I hiss, tightening my fingers on the muscles of her back and ignoring the feel of her vertebrae between. "There!" Just enough of a defensive ridge that I had almost missed it, being colored pale sand amidst paler sand. She understands my intent as soon as she gauges the direction I am looking in. Hands balled at our chests, we elbow-crawl the distance, and Yevon does absolutely nothing to reassure either of us on the way that we are not expecting bullets in the back.

Once we make it to the shallow pit, we shift to a crouch and make better time off the field thanks to the low gorge. No sooner do finish tugging the recording machina along by its strap then the fiends explode over the sides of the dunes; they cannot use the bodies of their fallen as defensive structures, as we can, so instead they choose to pitch themselves ahead in hopes of overwhelming through sheer numbers. Paine and I barely made it clear before the guards crack the safety releases off their machina and strike the ignitions. The sand where we formerly took refuge is bathed in blossoming heat; unable to stop themselves, the most eager fiends find themselves plowing headlong into an inferno. The smell of burning fur gives way to the stench of blackening flesh before the pyreflies break free, seeping forth from wounds like so much ichor or melted fat.

Paine is well-trained. Even while she is swallowing down her nausea, her hands are dutifully sweeping the lens of the machina back and forth, focusing in on the analytical details that would entertain historians in future years for hours.

I am busy listening. One person is screaming over the noise, "Team Four's still back there! _Team Four--_" again and again as our numbers scurry before the monsters' hunger, the jackal-fiends darting in and around the gouts of flame while the serpentine heads of gucumatz beasts tower back to spit light upon us. Once more my hand touches Paine's back, and this time, she understands. Backpedaling slowly as I help to guide her, the woman continues to fixate on the business of marking time turning into disaster.

Fire rolls forth again in an ocean's red wave. After Nooj's warning I have heard nothing from our own teammates, but everyone is jumbled together by the look of it, some pulling back while others remain at the front line to defend the machina weapons. Distraction would mean that Paine falls, so I place my second hand on her spine, move to hold her hips instead; lockstep-fashion she works, and I keep my thumbs on the small of her back while my eyes hunt out our companions in retreat.

There. Gippal's height and the comb of his hair would be enough to catch my attention, but it is his voice that confirms his identity through the battle. More than that, it is his actions that clue me in. The Al Bhed is pulling someone else with him as he goes. That someone is trying to hit him with a stick.

"Come _on_ man, don't you start this _cred_ again!" Gippal has one hand beneath each of Nooj's arms and is trying to haul him upright against the slickness of the sands. Nooj is growling against him. His teeth are bared in his own frustration with himself, in how he fights against Gippal's good intentions along with the stiffness of his metal limbs. The Deathseeker's cane rises to bludgeon the Al Bhed clumsily on the shoulder again. Gippal shrugs it off.

"We told you you're not gonna die, got it?" the Al Bhed leans down to holler directly in Nooj's ear, and then I lose sight of them both while Gippal's words circulate in the air, mixing with the smoke and pyreflies.

I am in the process of deciding that neither Paine and I acquired anything worse than a few bruises when the patter of flamethrowers belching begins to die off. The machina guns have petered to silence well before; in the humming of overheated air, I had not noticed. My hands remain neatly seated upon Paine's waist. Since there does not look to be need for further retreat, I stop walking and pull her against my stomach, scanning the field over her shoulder while she leans into the living shield I present.

Somehow, I do not think I will tell anyone that the smell of burning bodies is an excellent perfume for Paine.

Her voice is a bedroom murmur when she turns the recording machina again in a patient arc across the field. They must have give her classes for that express purpose alone--retain steady camerawork even when expecting your own arms to be bitten off by the subject you are taping. "It's over," she says, throat sleepy as pillow-mumbles, and I lean my chin against her head.

"Gippal was with Nooj." Verbalized for reassurance. "He'll bring him back alive, even if Nooj is denying it every inch back."

"Good."

The machina have all gone silent. In the oily smoke, none of us can have a clear view. We assume that there are no further fiends because nothing is launching itself out of that artificial fog to bury its fangs in someone's throat. When the desert winds pick up to throw foul air into our faces, I reach up to help cover Paine's nose with one of my sleeves. Her hair is the only filter I need to be able to breathe clean. All I inhale is Luca sea-salt.

None of us say anything as the minutes tick by. The dunes are immobile. There are no human voices calling out to us from the distance to tell us they are all right. No fiend-roars either.

Surveying the trails of smoke stacking themselves into pillars against the whiter clouds above, the instructor in charge folds his hands behind his back. He was unlucky to be overseer of this section of the march when it was attacked; every inch of his body speaks of being jilted, irritated, _inconvenienced_ by this interruption. I remember him from my first interview. Doryal, that had been his name, and he had looked at me as if my presence puckered the air.

"We move on." The command is crisp as new-cut papers. Three words are all the explanation Doryal gives before he turns and begins to slog down the path back to the caravan's fore.

This order does not sit well with all the recruits. Whispers explode, discussions too rapid to be hushed fully; words fly away from the smaller groups to mix into a conversation that resembles a monster. _Left to die,_ it growls, _they were left to die what are we going to do we can't just leave them there what if they're hurt what if more fiends attack I don't have enough ammo why don't we all have weapons they didn't have machina by the fayth they were defenseless._

It resolves itself in the act of one man. Propelled on by the ugly hum of resistance around him, the trainee stalks forward to block Doryal's path. When the instructor attempts to blast him into small pieces by virtue of an affronted stare alone, the man reaches out to grab at Doryal's arm.

"What about Team Four?" By the voice, I recognize the unfortunate. Team Six's prime gunner, marksmanship even better than Gippal's. I suspected him of coming from the Djose region because of his habit of wearing a pauldron smelted down into overlapping plates on his bicep. His name started with an M. 

I hope I can remember the rest of it before I need to write it down on a death marker.

Doryal, seized, stares down his nose at the trainee. "We retain adequate numbers for the test. Further delay is unacceptable." A tug of his arm is his signal to be released, but the youth does not move, only tries to yank an answer out of him by wrestling with that sleeve. Several guards have already begun to advance upon the unlucky individual before the rest of Team Six appears to pull their companion away by force. 

Even as they do, a circle widens around them as other candidates back away; we have all learned from the example of Team Four. Draw the attention of the instructors, and you will be doomed. Six is next on the list by the look of it. Doryal gives an imperious sniff before snapping his fingers; his escort falls into line, and they move away in black-beetle formation, machina bristling as they accompany him to the front of the caravan line.

Their recorder catches the furtive glances of the rest of us, draws his arms protectively around his machina. Then one of the guards detaches to speak quietly to him, and the man is led away.


	7. Sphere 7

Camp is not made until it is too late at night to continue the march. Yevon has pushed us relentlessly away from the fiends' attack, giving none of us the option of attempting to sneak back and still return to the main line undiscovered. By rights, it was our team along with Six that should be assigned to the rear now that Four has been lost, but the officials spoke to Nooj and ordered us separately to the center of the pack. 

None of us know what this means. Gippal whispered to me that we might be only segregated from Six because the instructors are hoping for a repeat of an accident that was kismet for Yevon and disaster for the rest of us. If the Al Bhed is right, then Three is either at the bottom of the list or the top. They have remained at point consistently thus far. Even the instructors and their guard walk several minutes behind.

I wonder if Three is realizing yet that having a position in the lead is no honor, but only a glorified bait in case we are caught from the front.

Nooj found us gossiping in our oblique rebellion and gave his opinion. The Deathseeker believes that we are being sectioned out because of the value of our recorder. Paine and I escaped being casualties through sheer luck, but the instructors might be under the impression that it is talent. 

If Nooj is right, then we are doomed. Paine was called away with the other recorders for an emergency meeting in transit, so we will not be saved if it is she whom the test officials desire alive. We have not seen her for hours. Left without our final member, the three of us trudge along like gallows-criminals bound in misery, keeping pace together in unthinking companionship.

When she is finally returned to us alive, it is well after Gippal had rigged the tent without either my or Nooj's help this time. None of us knew what to do with her share of the equipment, so we had left it in a pile in the center, as a cat might drop the dead body of a bird it suspects was actually your pet. All of us had stepped carefully around it and that had been our only acknowledgement that it was there.

Gippal spots our recorder first. "Paine!" Joy from the Al Bhed is easily expressed. "You're back! Hey, we were wondering, I mean we didn't know what was up when you got called away and you know we kind of were hoping you'd be back in time to have dinner, I know it's late but we didn't want to eat yet without you and--"

He's in the middle of raising his hand and his voice alike when Nooj interrupts. "Talk inside." 

We obey without question. In my mind, the Deathseeker is right to request privacy for this. Paine has not said anything, her lips pressed firm in a line that matches the stern mien of her eyes. Carried against her thigh is her machina, out in the open as a badge might be borne. I hold the tent flap open for her to enter and then I tie it shut behind us all. I will sit near the door. It will help me notice if anyone is approaching.

Even inside, Paine does not relinquish hold of her recording machina. Instead she takes to the ground, crossing her legs and cradling the thing in her lap. While she appears more angry than vulnerable, all of us have come to know better than to gauge too much from her default expression. We already know that there is something wrong because she has not spoken. Nor has she let her jaw unclench.

Nooj leads. "What happened?"

"They confiscated my sphere."

None of us understand at first. Our Deathseeker arches a brow, mystified but responding to the rules of adversaries and attack; an enemy has intruded on his personal squad of three, even if that enemy is technically our superiors. Paine lost something. The details are unimportant. Paine lost something, so our choices are to defend ourselves from what is only an assault under the vaguest of descriptions. Nooj is our leader; fiends were once living people before their death, and he has made a career out of killing the former. Now his thoughts are working once more submerged in war.

I am not so quick to judge. The spheres are property of Yevon regardless, so in my mind, Paine should not be irate over having to return them prematurely. The instructors are an inconvenience. It does not mean that battle lines are drawn that can clearly define something so nebulous as an enemy in this situation.

Once more, it is simplicity that bridges us all and the isolation that we place ourselves into by our own thoughts. Wastefulness of machina makes little sense in Gippal's opinion, and he voices it. "_What?_ But... you would have turned it in anyway, wouldn't you?"

"I _know._" Paine is discontent over being on the losing end this time around. The failure fills her throat with snappishness. "They called up all the recorders. Took our spheres away, even those of us who weren't near the attack at the time. And they told us... they would determine what had happened. That we shouldn't ask to see the records to figure it out on our own." She finally lets one of her hands leave the machina in her thighs and reaches up to fold gloved fingers against her scalp. 

I can sympathize. A migraine is exactly what the officials are giving me as well.

"I don't like it." I cannot shake my head hard enough to express this. Nooj is broken out of his private estimations of advance and tactical retreat when I speak, and he studies me with narrowed eyes. I continue speaking regardless. "It's like... they let them die, and now they just want us to ignore it? What's next? What are we supposed to say if anyone asks us what happened to the other trainees out here?"

__

"Baralai." Gippal's pronunciation of my name is an exasperated one. "You're acting like any of this is supposed to surprise you. They're Yevon, what more d'you expect?"

Even though I know the Al Bhed is only resorting to old beliefs, uncustomary annoyance rises in my heart alongside my temper. "Do you want to tell the families of those people that their relatives just vanished?" I ask him in exchange. "We all knew the risk of fiends out here. What we didn't know was that we'd be abandoned just for asking questions."

"We're getting off track." It is Nooj who brings us back together. "Paine, what else happened while you were there?"

Something I have said seems to have attracted Paine's attention, because when Gippal and I both look back to her, she is staring at me. It is as if I have turned into a fiend myself by the way her eyes are fixated, a fiend of feathers and grace that hypnotizes its victims before it feasts. "I was looking for the spheres from Team Four's recorder," she answers after a long minute, even though she is speaking while still watching me. Then her face turns back to Nooj. "We each have different drop-sacks so that the teams can be told apart. I figured on working with the other recorders to try and substitute in our own spheres just in case Team Four had come across something they shouldn't have... if there was a reason why the instructors might have _wanted_ them deliberately eaten by fiends, instead of just ignoring them."

Gippal voices the question on all our minds. "And?"

"Gone. Team Three's recorder even asked when we all noticed that one of the sacks were missing. The instructors said that we should consider those spheres lost." This is a lie that is too blatant even for Yevon, and we all know it. Paine shifts uncomfortably and keeps her eyes on the floor. "Even though there should have been those that were already submitted, none of us were allowed to see them. We were told... that we should forget about them."

It is now that I realize the officers have brought no Summoners with them. Such a thought has never bothered me before, back when I thought the exercises they had called us for were practice only. No one had mentioned the desert until we were out here with not enough machina to go around, and empty barracks whose previous occupants we could only guess at.

Without a Summoner, they have never planned on having to Send any of us should an accident occur.

This realization could paint my face ashen with an unwillingness to believe, so I try and restrain my thoughts from going further.

"Your orders are to turn in even the spheres you record out of combat. Why?" Nooj likes having enemies to wage strategy against. It gives him leniency to be direct. "Can't you substitute other spheres and falsify the information to them?"

Paine's answer to this is to shake her head. "Yevon's marked the ones we're required to use. Red for the Crimson Squad." A delayed snort from our recorder shows her disdain for these imposed limitations. "Not only that, but they're also supposed to be keyed to a certain classification level. I don't know what that means, but all of the reports we recorders are tallying are going somewhere. I don't know why they're being so stringent with them. It's... uncommon."

Uncommon. As if Sin taking flight for tourists was something to be termed infrequent. 

I would hate to see what Paine found worth calling rare.

Gippal has noticed how deeply I have fallen into silence, my gaze refusing to hold directly upon people's faces but dropping to wander the sand beneath all our feet. He nudges me. I glance up to him as a warning; I do not think my natural suspicions will help anyone's peace of mind right now, particularly my own.

Paine is continuing to speak, made awkward for once underneath Nooj's determined aggression. "I... can give you my spares if you want." There is hesitation in her voice. No. Fear. Why? "Just be careful with them. If I request too many and don't turn them in, they'll wonder why I keep letting them get eaten by fiends." A dry laugh follows from her throat, but it dies quickly. The joke is an inadvertent reference to very real deaths. 

She realizes it, exhales the word, "Sorry."

Why do her eyes dart to me when she says that?

Nooj is the one who makes the final decision. "No. It's too risky. But try to record only the basics if you can, Paine. All of us," he nods to the group as a whole, "let's try to figure out why the maesters want to keep such a tight control over these things." Command makes his voice strong again. It motivates his body, urges him up once more to pace broken lines across the sand. "If you ever find discards, try to hold onto them. Just in case. I don't like Yevon meddling in this way. If we want the truth, though, we're going to have to dig it out on our own." 

Our Al Bhed has lost interest with Nooj's words past the man's first firm declaration. Glimmers of light peek across the tent and paint the ceiling with ruddy waves; Gippal has one of the spheres already in his hands, having apparently taken the orders literally. Like a farm pest, he squirreled it out of Paine's pouches without asking or any of us noticing. Now he rolls it from palm to palm as he speaks. "You got one with Baralai in it?"

I interpret his question as a request for confirmation, and dart a look at the orb he toys with. Paine knows better and confronts him directly. "What do you mean by _that?_" Her tone of voice startles me and I change the direction of my curiosity to her; it is Paine's turn to resort to avoidance when I do, turning her head back towards Nooj and then towards her compromised machina pack. 

Currently, I am not sure who's winning in the fencing match of our faces.

"I just figured, hey, maybe sometime when I'm a big-shot commander and I haven't seen you three in a couple months 'cuz you've been busy with your own units, I can play it and it'd be like you were there." Gippal has a particular shamelessness. It's his heart. He confesses such a thing to the group and we all stare at him as if he were Sin itself, walking and talking and smiling. He does not look bothered by our surprise.

Even Nooj looks momentarily taken off balance by Gippal's nonchalant ease. This is no longer a council of battle. Now it is a reminder of alliances again, and in this field, Nooj is not as utterly comfortable as the blonde. Our Deathseeker laughs and holds his hand out in a lax demand for the sphere. When it is given to him, he tosses it towards Paine without even glancing at the contents. 

Remarkably enough, what is jest almost becomes embarrassment; our recorder registers the flicker of motion barely in enough time to look over, snap her hand up and catch the orb before it physically strikes her. Neither of us were paying much attention. By almost cracking Paine's skull with a glorified record, Nooj has interrupted a brief skirmish between the both of our wills being pitted against one another through the language of sidelong glances. 

Shame. I think I was winning.

"I need to get spares now." Judging from the dry heaviness of her voice alone, this is not a task that Paine relishes. "I'd have had extra if I didn't get that last one taken away." Sand trickles from her legs as she gets to her feet. The machina hangs from her fingers like a sword, threat implicit even though it remains dormant. Then Paine kneels by her pile of equipment long enough to sheathe the thing in its carrying bag, and it is hidden behind a zipper and two buttons.

Gippal flops down on the cot. Considering that this limits my conversation options to Nooj, and he already has begun to lapse into belligerent brooding, I also stand. My fingers undo the ties on the tent flap and then pull it back. "I'll walk you over."

Her footsteps slow when I present this offer. It causes me to wonder if she had wanted to get away from all three of us with her errand. Then she inclines her head, wordless, and ducks out of the shelter. 

Outside, occupied by velvet dark, the desert is estranged from its noonday heat. Sand does not retain the sun as effectively as moist dirt, and so most of the trainees are wrapped up in their own tents under whatever sparse blankets they have managed to win off each other in gaming bets. Here and there, campfires stud the encampment. They burn low. Any heat coming off them is rabidly absorbed by the guards stationed on night watch. They clump around the thin blazes rather than keep their eyes on the dunes, so I hope that tonight will not surprise us with more monsters.

Paine herself suppresses a shudder as the difference in temperatures strikes her again after exiting our tent. In silent response I step closer, and then finally reach out an arm to touch my fingers to the small of her back. That is a spot I am becoming overly familiar with on our recorder; in the future, I may always remember her by association with a slight dip in someone's skin. Paine takes up the silent offer, leans into me. 

I think about offering her the jacket, but that would require removing my hand from her to take it off first.

I choose instead to speak. "You were... really calm in filming." 

"My hands were shaking," our recorder admits with a short laugh. It is a sound that sums up all of her own tension. Nooj's fists, Gippal's tendency to ramble, and now Paine's breath when she barks it. "Anyone who tries to play back half my spheres is going to have the worst luck trying to figure out what went on."

"Maybe then they won't study ours too much." Light banter serves its purpose. The virtue of the two of us is that we are the quietest in our team, and the volume of our words barely carries above the slight crunching of our footsteps. 

Midnight's peace is impossible to preserve. Just when I am thinking about how comfortable Paine's leg feels against mine as we walk, she speaks up in a phrase as hard as steel. "Look... I just want to know something before this goes any further." Make that as hard as stone. Paine is forthright when she is uncertain, and despite how I know this well by now, I still wonder if she will attempt to break my arm if I displease her.

So I am careful when I speak. "Yes?"

"Are you going to get me into trouble with the maesters, Baralai?"

Paine's voice is low when she says this, like a swordblade coming in with hope to hamstring you. It does its job perfectly. I stop in place stunned; the hand on her waist reaches up to grip her shoulder, working on pure instinct alone and desiring her not to depart. Tr to hit me. Then the rest of me is moving and I am pulling her to face me, both my palms on the mixed cloth and flesh of her pride. Her arms are cooler than I would have expected. I wonder how hard she is working to keep herself from shivering.

"Why did you say something like that?" I do not recognize who birthed that phrase until I replay it back in my mind and notice that it was my lips that moved. The resonance of it is too low. The last time I heard such a noise in my mouth was when I was last angry, and that years ago. Back when life wasn't a matter you could smile through. Being around my teammates has changed me. They are reaching inside my guard and making me honest.

Paine recognizes the banked ferocity of my words. She stares intently at my jacket collar with no sign to actually confront me back. I wonder what Gippal and Nooj have done to destroy all the habits she grew up with in turn. "I always thought you would be the most loyal to Yevon than any of us, Baralai. Can you blame me?" Even her words have transfigured to uncertain adolescents, stubborn still as they may be.

"You... were afraid I would turn you in?" The concept is painfully surreal. "For helping us out?"

My doubt of her has Paine uncomfortable again. She refuses to look at me, angles her elbows in uncommitted efforts to pull away. "I can't read you. _Okay?_" Saying it sounds like she's been forced to present her own guts at a dinner party and be civil about the garnish. "You're not the easiest person to figure out what's going on. You were born in Bevelle, you still _sounded_ like you believed what the maesters said. And you take the least risks out of all of us. How am I supposed to know if you're just playing me for a fool?"

Ingrained behaviors are what keep me from denying the last question. Bevelle teaches a person to lie by omittance and to rarely commit. Besides. The nail that has driven through my mind is the accusation which seems the most out of place. It is to this that I protest. 

"I take risks."

Now at last, Paine wrenches her eyes away from tracing the temple script on my clothes. They lift to me like bloody accusations. 

"Prove it."

Above us, the stars spell out stories that navigators recite back to themselves when they are lost. 

I give in to the challenge of her face, blocking them out of my vision when I kiss her.

Paine's mouth tastes like she has torn the inside of her lip from biting it in frustration. Sweetness lingers, mixing with salt; a mystery undefined makes the flavor of her a mix I am compelled to devour. She pushes back in equal hunger. We wrestle there with fingers tightening in each other's clothes, Paine's hands succeeding in pulling the layers of my shirt out from where they have been tucked, and finally I break away first because I need to pant my breath back in. 

She's already moving to trace her tongue around my ear when I manage to revive my wits. We are both standing exposed in the middle of camp. I am telling myself that all the canvas shelters around us are likely occupied by _people_ who would definitely _not like us stumbling in on them._ They are full of sleeping guards or sleeping instructors or they are just plain stocked with people we should _not_ even think to interrupt.

I am telling myself this even as I'm taking a step towards one and reaching out an arm to twitch the entrance flap aside.

Paine comes to the conclusion of the contents before I do because it is hard to focus when her fingers are dipping into my belt. "Supply tent," she's mumbling against my chest while she's parting the folds of my clothes to mouth my skin.

Works for me.

Tumbling inside is a process that involves almost falling into several boxes when Paine's feet get snarled with mine. It would have likely been far more graceful if I had not had my leg pressing between hers. She is not as cold as I thought; rather, her thighs are hot enough through her shorts that as I cradle her to me, her body feels like a sun. 

The tent flap falls closed behind us. Paine makes a muted noise of protest when our mutual fumbling leads us to collide into what sounds like a munitions box, but by then her lips are back on mine and I am swallowing her muffled voice as it becomes a muffled groan. Buckles unsnap beneath my fingers. By the time Paine manages to finish pulling off my jacket and drop it unheeded to the floor, I have already managed to succeed a second time in undoing all the metal locks that keep her leather tightly in place. 

My bones remain unbroken. 

In the darkness, I can't see her as she lets her head tip back. I couldn't even if I wanted to because my eyes are closed from the pleasure of having her breast in my mouth and her knee bent up against my arm. The crates I am helping support Paine against have labels that might explain more of the maesters' intentions, but right now neither of us care to worry about what's inside them.

We are submerged in a world where the only light is what little that comes creeping underneath the canvas and I have absolutely no problem with being blind.


	8. Sphere 8

The loss of Team Four occurred when there were still many days left to the port. Yevon has us racing there regardless once the fiends claimed the bodies of our comrades, and the minds of many more. Open suspicion is something all the trainees know we will be reported for. Despite this, or because of it, we have begun to grow restless. Team Six is good friends with Team Five, and even though there are no further accidents yet, Five has begun to pitch their march closer and closer to Six. The guards have ordered them to spread out, ordered them repeatedly, and Five has turned a deaf ear to them. Others of us have cast our eyes into the wilderness in hopes that a luckier accident would have the instructors removed and leave us untouched. Even fiends are looking more reasonable by the hour.

There is nowhere we can escape to in this desert. If we do not obey Yevon, we will be left here.

But the instructors force our attention on the path while we try for our half-jogs down to our destination. Such a strain devours our energy for rebellion, making the Teams tame by default. The journey is even harder on Nooj than before. He is too proud to sling an arm over the shoulders of Gippal and I so that we can provide a lift between us; when our Al Bhed suggested it the first time, Nooj snorted and told us that we would lose even more points should our judges decide we are a crippled set. 

His reasoning is solid, but I think it is a convenient excuse for his true feelings. Our Deathseeker's pride is understandable. He'd been hauled out of combat once before in much the same manner, suspended between two of his teammates while blood spurted from the stump of his hip, and memory must be aching in his bones now that he has become a liability.

Gippal and I take turns on flank with him, so that he is not singled out as the sole cause of our delay. Paine cannot openly support the three of us so long as the officials are watching; I catch her biting her lip when we stumble beneath the weight of packs divided. Even though the Al Bhed and I have become used to bearing part of Nooj's share, now we must shoulder all of it and hope that it lightens him enough to keep pace. 

This is humiliation for Nooj. Rather than be our team leader, he is instead the factor that might destroy us. Our ranking in the pack has rapidly dropped from the middle to last, and we are barely able to keep up with even that standing. Every time the procession stops for noontime break, the four of us must press on so that we can take advantage of the opportunity to cover what ground we can. The other teams are silent as we walk through them. They dare not meet our eyes. 

When camp has broken and they pass us in turn on the march, they keep their eyes on the ground.

Heightened patrols have ended Gippal's late-night instruction courses and hence alienated us even further from our fellow teams. Once the shelters have been pitched and the watchfires lit, all the candidates have been told not to stray from their canvas quarters. Paine and I had exchanged a guilty look when Nooj brought back the news. We do not know what caused the new restriction. If it has come about because of us, we could have ripped our team from Yevon's fragile grace and sent us further down on the list than Six.

"_Fa'na vilgat_," is all Gippal grumbled when he came back in one night, rubbing the sand from out of his hair with stiffened fingers. One guard had shoved him into a dune when he'd caught the Al Bhed sneaking between Three's tent and ours. Gippal hadn't wanted to answer that he'd been investigating a jamming issue with Three's machina, and his reward for guarding their backs had been a bruise purpling on his jaw. 

More accurately, his reward for drawling back casual retorts to the guard's questions had been what earned Gippal the kick in the face. 

He'd nursed his welt with bravado, saying that it had been prejudice against the Al Bhed again, something he was _used_ to. No big deal in his eyes. Rather than rolling away on his bedding, though, the blonde had just rested an arm over the mark and watched the rest of us pretend to be interested in keeping our machina oiled. Nooj had eventually poked Gippal in the ribs with his cane, and that had been enough to wring a jest back from the blonde; Gippal had tumbled into our sitting circle eventually after that, propping his elbows on Nooj's back in vengeance for the prod.

Paine and I have taken to leaning against one another as long as the tent flap is closed and secure. The temptation of reaching out to one another during the march is strong, but we both have sensibility on our side. Paine is our recorder, assigned to us by Bevelle. She cannot be seen favoring us, not if she wants to possibly escape the fate that may befall us should the instructors decide we have failed. 

None of us know what will happen once we reach the dock. We do not even know if we will make it there.

If we do succeed in surviving the tests, we may be able to graduate into Yevon's confidence. 

I was born in Bevelle. I know better than any of us that we have no other way if we want to find the reason we are all being put through these maneuvers. Even if we could tear an answer out of our overseers here, there is no basis on which we can believe it. Paine's confusion over me is proof of that. How can you count upon an answer that is given through any means save under a cold night sky? 

Nooj is our tactician when it comes to troops. We differ on our methods, he and I; while the Deathseeker might support direct confrontation with the maesters, possibly after unifying the graduating teams under his banner, I believe that we need only use well-placed patience to have them tumble to our advantage. The debate itself is useless for the time being. We only banter it between each other to fill the minutes when no one is looking, and Paine's hair in in my fingers while she slumbers on my shoulder.

Waiting rankles the Deathseeker. It must come from his own impatience with his lifespan. That glower of his has become heavily favored as customary by the time that a scout runner reports back to the main line that Team Three has sighted the shorelines in the distance, the bobbing of masts waiting to bear us away from this desert death. Such an announcement should have reenergized the troops, but the remaining Teams only eyed the messenger and went back to maintaining their equipment. Raucous joking has been banished systematically from the camp since anything else might have a Team reported. 

At first, that threat had been cause for laughter too, but now we all are taking it very seriously.

Knowledge that we are nearing the termination of these tests drives Nooj back to speak with me. I have become so familiar with his silent brooding that I do not expect him to speak much when it is my turn walking by his side; because of this, the clearing of his throat is as startling as a machina shot. 

"Why are you following me, Baralai?"

Judging from the bald assertion of the statement, I decide that it is Nooj's turn to be uncertain. He is like Paine in that way. After becoming comfortable enough with her that I do not expect her touches to the back of my neck to be only prelude to her snapping it, I find that I have more confidence to play with old warbeasts.

"You block out the sun this way." To say that I play dumb out of a wry satisfaction for our positions reversed is to be grossly unfair, and also utterly true. "Sorry, did you want me to walk ahead?"

A snort, combined with the shake of his head, and it seems as if Nooj does not get the tease. "I mean all of you. Why do you keep working with me? I'm sure you could have had someone reassigned." 

Unspoken is the fact that we are all far too deep into the tests to alter matters now. I cover it by laughing. "Do you think you're getting off so easily?" One strap of my packs is wearing a ruddy track into my skin, grating into my shoulder with every step. Awkwardly, I attempt to heft its weight enough to resettle the load. Canteens half-full slosh against my leg while I walk, but I tolerate the rubbing. 

When Nooj stops to bend down, I automatically halt, thinking that he's starting to lose his balance with the cane. Instead he only hooks his fingers in the leather loops holding the bottles in place and tugs them off their clip. "Here. Let me."

"They're not heavy," I'm already protesting, but the shadow of a smile plays around his lips, and I succumb to our Deathseeker's need to save face.

The pace resumes, and the conversation lingers behind. I take the advantage to speak first. Experience is teaching me now that cutting off Nooj before he has opportunity to rally himself is better than letting him stew in a self-made construct of pessimism. It has worked for Gippal; I hope it will do the same for me.

"Nooj... you really don't think that anyone's going to give up on you, do you?" A man who is older than I am by a year, and the Deathseeker is already gauging the conclusion of his life. I have barely begun on mine by my own estimation, having built up practice in Bevelle for politics and pandering. Such training was what I used to think was key to society. Then I came to Bikanel.

"Hhn." The steady drag of Nooj's leg progresses forward, and I keep my eyes trained on the distant backs of Gippal and Paine teamed up in the fore. I do not have to stare directly at our Deathseeker to know he is next to me. "Going to tell me more bedtime stories of happy endings, Baralai? That I should accept that the three of you want to keep me around?" 

Countless retorts slide through my head, melting into a mental stream stocked with rippling fish. I choose the simplest. "I haven't stopped looking to you when we've needed it."

Gippal really is a bad influence on me.

We are both silent for the same length of time as Paine might use to grit her teeth and stare at her hands rather than answer me, and then our Deathseeker preempts any further observations on my part by speaking.

"Believing in a Deathseeker has to be one of the stupidest things I've heard." Nooj's words are sharp, but he's smiling and can't hide it despite how he turns his head to obscure the expression behind a loop of his hair. "You sure about this? No regrets?"

My relief is as bright as any of Gippal's laughs. A sound similar mixes in with my parrying question of, "Are you saying you'll let us down?"

"I'm saying that anyone who wants me alive for something is a fool. But," Nooj sighs, yielding the point as he shifts the canteens against his elbow, "maybe we're all fools here." There is something different in the way he lifts his head when he says this. He is walking with his gaze to the horizon instead of buried in the earth. It seems that he does not need to watch me to determine that I am still beside him either. "I won't give you any promises," he continues, the worst of his vocal warning being lost by how his mouth is making merry overtones. "I still might die any minute."

"Drop dead just like that?" I make a motion with my hand, flipping it over to imitate a wall falling down. Buckle clips clatter their accompanying laughter with my gesture. "I guess if you did, I'd be able to carry the water bottles again. Doesn't sound so bad."

"You _brat_," he snarls at me. When he turns his head, our eyes meet. It is too late for me to look away when there is humor that honest on my face, that open, and so Nooj is left exposed to the full of me revealed in my expression. I freeze. Not until his battle-tempered canniness has fallen upon me do I realize that I meant everything I have said to him. My teammates have destroyed my world, a realm of secrets taught and concealed from birth, and I have not known it until now.

Nooj is gracious enough to make no comment. 

"Gippal told me the same thing, you know." A toss of Nooj's head and we are walking once more. I cannot remember when we paused, but it must have been about the time I was left vulnerable in his vision. "He came originally because he wanted to know my opinion on sending things to a girl back home--an apology, he said. We ended up talking about life instead." Another sound burrows out from his throat. It is a muffled laugh. "Almost makes me feel like there's something waiting for me too. Despite... everything."

"Careful," I reply, shaking my own head in mock warning. "If you keep that up, I might actually think that you're looking forward in the future."

Luck spares me from being slapped by the cane because Nooj is too busy walking on it. Instead, he smirks. "My advice?" Dramatic effect causes him to pause so that I am glancing over, and it is then when the full of my attention is upon him that he answers me. "Open your eyes, Baralai."

Some dark quirk in his voice snatches me out of my cheer as deftly as a sparrow plucks a fly. "What--"

"Hey! Baralai! _Eteud!_"

I am kept from demanding elaboration on Nooj's part because Gippal is waving his hand in the air at me, having stopped in place with Paine while they wait for us. It must be his turn for shift. I lift my own fingers to hail back to him; apparently my doing so has caused the Al Bhed to win some kind of bet, because he pumps his fist once and then wags his finger at Paine. She retaliates by batting her hand against his shoulder, and then promptly reaches over to shove him. 

A minute's walk will see the four of us reunited, and then we will break off again in pairs, keeping one of us always with the other. That is how we will keep each other safe. Should the Team become separated, we are almost guaranteed to fall out here in the desert. Lost in the golden, blinding sea--to fiends or to Yevon, who knows?

Until we find our answer, we will keep changing partners until we all make it to the dock and board the ship that will carry us away.

I am not afraid.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

__

Author's Note: This concludes the main portion of Blind Spot. Following the theme of the Crimson Spheres, there are two secondary chapters coming after the main eight. They provide the segueway into a quick Baralai story coming up, focusing on the two years after the defeat of Sin, his rise to praetor, and his experiences in Bevelle. 

Thanks go to everyone who's read this. I'd also like to thank Death's Messenger, who kept reminding me that I should finish this fic on a timely basis. In fact, anyone who's commented has helped this fic get done a lot faster than it would have normally. Thanks.


	9. Record 9

Static scrolls over the picture. 

__

The hour is night. Stars wink overhead when the heavy cloud cover passes them; the weather impending was a bad omen, some of the sailors had asserted, but they held faith the shore would be made in due time. 

The sphere is dated from three months ago.

__

"Hey." Spray-moisted wood creaks as Gippal wedges his foot in the railing, half-perching on the edge despite any danger. Distortion through the sphere makes the Al Bhed's voice tinny. _"I've got a question."_

__

A stutter of the lens when the ship rolls, and a dark-skinned hand slaps down to steady the machina. Fingers obscure the view. Then they remove themselves, and after a series of jerks and refocusings, the picture returns to stable once more.

__

"Hm?" The sound comes from a speaker off-screen. By the sound of it, they are the ones cradling the machina.

__

"So... uh, the Crimson Squad. We're supposed to be top of the Crusaders after all this is done, yeah?" Gippal scrubs his hair as one might sand down a rough-edged plank. When he twists around to sit fully on the railing, it is revealed that the Al Bhed is grinning.

__

Nooj's distinctive scrape-thump-scrape is the first announcement of his arrival, and then he crawls onscreen. The Team is congregating, but there is not the tension in the air of before. The ocean can be blamed for this change; the relief it must bring after so many weeks in the desert is a palpable one.

In playback, the sea is a dark blot that quivers around the ships. It is a cold bounty that harbors Sin deep within endless fluid depths. Still, even black water is a sight welcome after the hell of Bikanel's desert. At least you might not die hot.

The shadow of the monster plagued the trainees then during their ocean crossing. Sin must have haunted the person holding the machina, because the majority of the view is focused incessantly upon the roiling waters and the possible doom lurking beneath.

Centered on the screen, Gippal takes an unseen sign to continue._ "But, y'know... with this Operation Mi'ihen, it's supposed to take out Sin. What're we going to do if we pass and then the Crusaders aren't needed anymore?"_

"Shouldn't we think about it when it comes?" Paine interrupts as she manifests, striding forward with crisp bootheel clicks on the straining planks of the deck. Despite the salt-spray, the temperatures are still warm enough that she has not changed out of her usual leathers. "Not much use trying to turn back now."

The angle of the recording machina changes. Now it is focused upon Paine.

__

"Gippal has a point." Elaborated into words, the identity of the invisible speaker becomes clear. His voice sounds sincere while under the influence of playback. It is almost painful to hear with all its open-souled exposure. _"The maesters are playing both sides of this. I'm not sure why they want something like the Crimson Squad anymore, or what kind of people they want succeeding in it. All we can do is see what this test is like... and judge from there."_

__

Paine frowns at the screen. She makes a twist of her hand in beckoning, but the machina is not returned to her yet.

__

The lens moves away from the woman in black hide and white skin; it assembles its view back upon the Al Bhed. Gippal notices this, stretches elaborately in a theatrical effort that almost causes him to tumble right off the ship, were it not for his feet wedged into the railing bars. As it is, he flails an arm wildly enough that he nearly clocks Nooj in the head.

At first, the Deathseeker grumbles and leans away. Then he succumbs to the impulse to smack Gippal's shins with his cane.

The machina jiggles with the suppressed laughter of its wielder.

"Hey!" Gippal attempts to sound betrayed. Shoving a hand down, he rubs at his bruised leg. Injury is forgotten almost instantly once another thought strikes him, and the Al Bhed pipes into further questioning. "There's another thing bugging me. What are we going to do if they want... I dunno, weird_ things from us?"_

__

"Stranger than this?" Nooj snorts. "I'm with Baralai on this one. We keep going in."

His gaze meets the lens when he turns away from the rail, and for an instant, it appears as if the Deathseeker is staring directly into the machina with eyes highlighted cold under the night stars. 

Something about Nooj's intensity causes the person holding the camera to twitch. It is a miniscule motion. The recovery comes quick, but that slight jarring is stamped forever on the records.

Nooj moves on. 

"Did you manage to keep any of your data spheres from collection?" he asks. This is to Paine, who is just now lowering her hand from where she had covered up her amusement over Gippal.

Paine shakes her head. It is a raptor's apology, grace and displeasure wrapped into something that would rather resort to a more forceful solution. "They're still keeping tight watch over all of them. But I'm keeping my eyes open. If it looks like I can get away with one, I'll bring it back."

__

"Good," the Deathseeker says, and then paces onwards down the length of the ship. 

The camera tracks him. Steady.

__

Fingers insert themselves between the machina and the rest of the view. Paine has jabbed her hand over the lens in an attempt to catch its attention. She succeeds. The machina swings back towards the woman in an irregular sweep that catches Gippal trying to balance on the railing, and failing.

"You look like something's on your mind."

Now the machina is balanced once more. So is the person holding it, from the way they laugh first before speaking. _"I just think we shouldn't do anything right now to make the instructors wary."_

"Still taking the safe route," and this is Paine's smirk to the recording lens.

__

"Better be careful, Paine." Now the view jumbles itself again, aimed at a pair of tanned pants as the person holding the machina dismounts from his perch. _"I just might prove you wrong."_

The sphere clicks off.


	10. Record 10

The sun is a heavy red orb on the horizon. 

Private lifts hum through the air, industrious bees carrying officials back and forth. It is so obvious now, but machina exists everywhere in Bevelle. I only had to open my eyes.

Children whelped inside Yevon's watchful fold are simply raised to question everything save that which is directly in front of their faces.

I was one of them.

The sunset should have taught me that the first time I watched it descend in a way I thought I wanted to remember; Bikanel's desert, endlessly looped in my mind, with Paine's legs bent up and Paine's fingers in my hair and Paine's breath mixing with the sighs of the surf. 

I'd never realized before that eve that arguments could be simpler than the maester-wrought ploys. People could quarrel just because they cared. But the danger in believing in others was that you could get so lost in their eyes that you forgot not to be blinded; when you were fooled into thinking that anything could be surmounted as long as you had another in your arms, you only changed one lie for another.

Like me.

I should have learned the second time I watched the daylight die. My attention had been on Gippal, all his antics and the noise of his boots clomping over the deck. The ships that pulled away from the docks only carried Bikanel's survivors to their deaths, but we hadn't known that at the time; we'd been ecstatic to have even reached the shoreline, caught up in our own excitement. Ocean waves warned us by turning shades of red from the lowering sun. We'd sailed on a wide river of blood all the way to Luca and only thought that we were escaping to the final test, and from there to freedom.

Gippal had believed in a future where all four of us would be together. He kept telling me about it as the clouds darkened to slow blues before they faded into the rest of the night. The Al Bhed kept going on about it for so long, I think I fell asleep on him. I know his voice followed me into dreams filled with crimson waves and a melting sun.

The Al Bhed was convinced of the success of our Team. He couldn't think of a reason we wouldn't fail so long as we all stayed together. Gippal's logic worked wonders on machina; solve problems by cleaning the parts, disassemble, then repair. Modify, tinker, rebuild. Everything runs smoothly so long as there isn't grime between the gears.

He convinced me, too. I watched him as a silhouette on the railing until his outline dissolved into the darkness, and it was only his voice trailing back to me in the night.

It was Nooj who taught me at last about the consequences of friendship. Three times it took for me to learn; three suns setting before I finally caught on. Our Deathseeker fooled us all with his stories so well that even I believed him. We had been duped by his cynicism, drawn into reaching out to him in hopes he would respond. 

Nooj fed us small drabs of encouragement that were flavored over-sweet to hide the bitterness of his ambitions beneath. All of us ate our fill.

Now I am aware of my meal, as rotting as the meat may be. Yevon stinks of it. It smells like Nooj, like the rancid whale-reek left behind on the beaches after the maesters had given the Crusaders to Sin. The halls here swarm with people whose breath is cloying with machination. Some have had be publicly exposed when Spira's towns wanted a brand of justice that would appease them. Others who were equally guilty have managed to bargain for safety in private deals with the priests.

Yevon is very good at choosing its sacrifices. Summoners go to Sin, Sin goes to Yevon; Crusaders die, summoners die, even Sin dies, but the spiral continues even through the Calm. I only needed that lesson once and have become careful not to repeat my previous errors. After a Deathseeker reminded me of the cost of vulnerability, I have not allowed myself to become even accidental fodder as a temple scapegoat. 

I owe Nooj for that. The irony makes me smile sometimes.

Evening at Bevelle is not like the view from Mi'ihen. I do not like the Highroad any more than I think I enjoy ocean voyages these days, or revisiting coastlines. Each location is haunted by the forms of my teammates. All save Bevelle, which means that my home is the safest place to stand and watch the sunset from, squinting against the ruddy dimming of the light.

Thankfully, nights have different memories for my association.

"We never did get that spare."

"Did you say something, lord?"

The downside to the temple lies in the company I must keep. I should have noticed when one of the attendants surfaced. Ghosts of the Crimson Squad are sloppy in crossing into my personal domain; they distract me even on the Highbridge.

I give my answer before I have finished turning to see who has joined me. "Nothing important. Is there something you needed to summon me for?" 

The unlucky acolyte bows, keeps his head down. He senses that he has interrupted a moment of private reflection. He is right. "We have reports that claim a sphere fitting your description has been seen among those tallied in the Kilika excavation." Heavy layers of his robes crinkle as the man organizes his arms parallel once more, bowing again in hopes that I will dismiss him now that the message has been relayed.

Too bad for him. "Kilika?" Strange for records locked to the Squad to have traveled so far away. Whoever must have fled with them must have run quickly. "So... Nooj's teams will have first chance at it?" 

"I am sorry, my lord." A nervous swallow on the part of the acolyte is sign that I sound less than enthusiastic. "I do not know which Seekers have been formally assigned to the task."

Kilika is much too far from Bevelle for me to be able to nip out the back and investigate on my own. If it is a record from the Squad, the distance has already ordained it as lost. "I see." The result is not pleasant, but until I have more influence in the temple, I must accept that I do not have as many capable agents as I would prefer. "If anyone needs me, I'll be with lord Trema."

Though I have dismissed myself by that crisp statement, my hands linger on the marble balustrades. I am loathe to depart the Highbridge. Not while the daylight is still in the midst of expiring itself, at least, and its heat dissolving like a fever-dream.

"Is there something else on your mind, lord?"

Crimson is in my thoughts. Crimson and salt-spray and hair. Machina parts spread out on my shirt in the tents, Al Bhed eyes grinning. Metal limbs. 

Metal bullets in my back.

"The sunset is spectacular from these heights," I lie. "It's so... illuminating."

I hear an exhalation behind me, the acolyte grateful that I have not found something to punish him over. Another priest might have conjured annoyance, used pretense to vent their frustration. I only look at the weather. "Praise be," he murmers in agreement, and his voice is relieved. 

I find myself answering in kind while my thoughts are filled with something quite other than the sky. 

"Praise be."

~ fin


End file.
